1. Field of the Invention
This invention deals with a method to correct data in a data processing system remotely. The example chosen to illustrate the invention is that of the smartcard, particularly a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card coupled to a Portable object (Mobile phone, PDA, etc.).
Generally, this invention can be applied to all the smart card industry and not only the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) industry. That means for all other smart cards product with an Over The Air system or any smart card product with a remote system management.
The invention will be very useful to new business proposals regarding maintenance system.
2. Description of the Related Art
GSM SIM Card manufacturers face a big issue when they have to deal with defect corrections on cards that are already on the field. They provide from thousands up to millions of card to Telecommunications operators. They also provide various kinds of applications with various level of complexity.
Sometimes, even after a long integration and validation phase, a problem is discovered on some of these applications when they are already on the field.
A correction of these defects is very painful for the Telecommunication operators and Card manufacturer industry. Because they have to deal with a huge number of cards, it will always cost a lot of money to correct the defects, even if the problem is minor. In many situations, the cost is so prohibitive that no correction can be done.
A smart card is based on a chip. In the heart of this chip, more particularly in a ROM (Read Only Memory), Card manufacturers put their operating system called “hardmask”, and load their applications on a EEPROM (Electrically Erasable programmable Read Only Memory). These applications can be a mix of “softmask” and applets.
A mask is a software dedicated for a smart card microcontroller.
Once the applications are loaded on the card and when the personalization is done, the card is locked. At that time no more softmask applications can be downloaded. With a Java smartcard it is possible to download another applet but the previous one has to be deleted entirely. Cards are released on the field and no further correction can be done. Only smartcard file system management (creation or deletion) is possible with the Over The Air services.